Discovering a new airport!

As planned I spent the night in a new airport: Hangzhou. This is my way to discover what airports can offer, and Hangzhou had been quite comfortable. I could in fact sleep in a massage chair at the departure floor.

Also, being a quite small airport, even if it is open during the night the departure floor is extremely quite and they even switch the lights off!!

The night there was planned, but not the delay of the flights from Shenzhen. Maybe because most of China (central and north part) are having a terrible storm rainy weather, almost all flights have been delayed and some even cancelled. My flight for Hangzhou was on time as scheduled until the boarding time, then they start adding delay until they gave up and just said to wait.

Total lack of information, typical attitude of Chinese society, towards the masses that usually are too afraid of authorities to raise their head.. But after waiting for hours, the sheep there must have realized that air officers are not really officers, ie. they got no real power, differently from police or army.. so along the many hours of wait at least 2-3 times I heard shouts of angry passengers towards the air representatives. Once especially a large amount of people group around one guy shouting and probably threatening the gate officials, to the point that some of the security people arrived to calm the situation. After that, nothing changed. And the gate people keep being very unkind as if it is normal the passengers should just wait and shut up. I am happy to see even the Chinese passengers sometimes do not accept this.

At the end we were boarded around 1am (flight time was 22:05) and had a first sleep on the plane followed by a couple good hours on the massage chair!

As last note: the weather in Shenzhen had been cloudy and rainy for maybe 10 minutes.. most of the time sunny and hot as usual!!

FUNNY THING OF THE DAY – I like very much this hotel in Hangzhou because there is a pc in every room and also I had already tested my VPN tunnel with good results, but the internet explorer version is so old (6.x) that most pages do not open correctly.. so even if I will hopefully manage to post this, I did not manage to include the pictures.. I just could set the links (maybe.. if they work!)

Add — I can save the draft but I can’t publish the post!!! The “Publish” button does not appear in the screen, probably because the coding too advanced for this IE version!! I will have to use one WordPress application from iPhone (that amazingly let me open the blog even if I do not have any VPN set on the iPhone), but for doing that I have to go to the nearby Starbucks, because no WiFi in the hotel!!

Fashion?

As one that has been using glasses since very early age, the fake-glasses fashion in China (frame, no lenses) always looked like a bad joke!

But there is no limit in.. fashion!

I never had to use braces (maybe I should have used), but all my friends that had complained about it.. I also usually do not think a girl in braces is sexy, but clearly I know nothing about fashion:

Fake braces: Asia’s curious teenage fashion trend

For now this is more common in Thailand where they got also several related problems..

Brilliant recharge stations

I’m at Hong Kong airport and as already noticed in the departure hall check in area, there are a few charging hotspots with the common HK-UK power plug (if which I don’t have the adaptor) and… USB plugs!!

Brilliant!!!

Only pity my tablet charger is not USB type and I have still forgot to make a cable to mini jack for it. To do before next trip!

FUNNY THING OF THE DAY – Another brilliant thing is the free wifi all over the airport. And an extremely good connection!

Hakama finally fixed..

..and then ready to leave!

During the practice holidays in Scandinavia my hakama broke apart, opening (as usual) on the back “plate” side (koshi) and not having anymore Aiki-mama Jacqueline to fix it for me with her magic sewing skills I asked the only colleague that understands some basic English to help me to get someone fixing it. It is quite common to see on the street some old ladies with a tiny stand a nd a sewing machine on doing basic jobs (I mean, basic for them!).

So we went to one, but since I needed the thread to go through the gummy plate, the lady sent us to a shoe repairing shop just close by (if my colleague was not there I would have been stuck already!). There, with a hand propelled sewing machine for hard jobs the lady made me a double seam in the back plate! 10RMB well spent (and I think it was expensive since I am a foreigner, but how to complain!)

FUNNY THING OF THE DAY - Of course, a laowai at a local street shop is always source of much attention in China (as anything different from the day by day boring ordinary life). So when I was squatting at the shoe repair shop and helping to move the hakama without taking it completely out of the bag (for not make it dirty, but not only.. it would have been impossible to explain what it was, especially trying to avoid totalk too much about Japan in these days that the island related problems are coming out again!). Anyway, I snatched a picture 1 second after I left the shop and normally htere are not so many children or people around it!! I left, the show was over.. and they were leaving as well

Quality control in China

They always sound like stereotype, at least until you work in a Chinese production factory in a factory village like Longgang district!

Quality control in general in China is bad! there are of course exceptions, but usually they are when the contorl is performed by foreign entities!

So, how many crackers are supposed to be in every little bag, contained in the product box?

4 is the right answer!

I assure you I did not eat one in the other bag just to make China appear.. Chinese

Tissier sensei in Stockholm!

Yes, it is *that* time of the year..

I will miss it.. this year as well, next, hopefully not..

As so many before, one of my favorite appointments in Aikido year..

Many memories and good friends I really miss:

FUNNY THING OF THE DAY – A good life example, being 7th dan shihan and still carrying mats: Jan Hermansson

Jan Hermansson

How’s that possible?

Sitting in Starbucks, as usual when I want to do something “special” here in Longgang, I’m writing this post from a WordPress application on the iPhone… And thus should just be impossible being the blog still blocked in China.

I’m not using a VPN: I wouldn’t know how to do on the iPhone. And I’m on the normal Internet connection from Starbucks.

But I can see the blog, my drafts, published posts and even stats, better than by using the terrible unstable Internet connection from the factory and the tunnel. Amazing!

So, what should I say worth reading? Oh yeah.. I’m moving back to Europe during the summer.

Surprise?!! I was a little when I got myself to this decision. I will write more about this. Especially once left.

It was not an easy decision but I had some thoughts. I don’t regret the experience and I am quite sure I will come back East one day. I do hope to find a job in Europe because this part of the plan is still foggy…

But I don’t want to talk too much now about this. Just happy this seems to work (let’s see if I manage to post) and since the weather lately is very much like rainy Stavanger, except for the temperature, I should try to use this feature more often and do what promise: post again on the blog.

Tomorrow I’ll meet some new people from one social homepage and go to cinema and Sunday I’ll go to Hong Komg for Aikido: 3 hours to go and 3 to come back, 2 hours practice. Yeah what we do for Aikido!!

Have a good weekend, you people not working tomorrow… Not like me…